Spinach Jade/Biography
Biography Blue Diamond V had a vastly different operation from her sisters or ancestors. For one, blessed by the Arch-Carbon Lonsdaleite, she had excellent—nay, godlike—aptitude for astronavigation and quantum mechanics. For another, she could confer this power to any of her gems, no matter their origin or defect, making them hyper-powerful star sailors. One of her first and most extraordinary of these star sailors was Spinach Jade, a Nephrite of stocky build and quirky attitude. Born from an amphibole-rich asteroid kindergarten, Spinach Jade proved to be an excellent resource for galactic conquest, as long as she could work with Blue Diamond’s other jades, especially Kosmochlor and Mint Jadeite. Spinach, Kosmo, and Mint commanded their own Green Army, which mostly consisted of expendable Green Talc grunts and the occasional Demantoid, for excursions into other weird worlds to harvest their resources. Trapiche Emerald, a space-faring Gem adopted from the late Olive Diamond’s Court, became a mere secretary and gofer to the shorter and less sophisticated Spinach, much to his horror. As the only gem of Blue Diamond V without her Elder Sign, many in her court saw Trapiche with suspicion and contempt, but none greater than Spinach Jade, who wouldn’t even let him out of her ship, the Amphibole Amplifier, on reconnaissance missions for fear that he would do something exceedingly stupid. It would be on the ship that Trapiche would make his stupidest decision: to plan the assassination of the Jades and regain his space-faring empire. It didn’t take a mighty mathematical mind to see through Trapiche’s schemes, yet it was another 100 years before he and Spinach actually came to blows about it. Their battle was a slow, plodding one, since neither of them had the programming for hand-to-hand combat. In spite of this, Spinach Jade learned fast, perhaps for her Nephrite nature (planet-bound Nephrites being known martial artists), or perhaps for having her instructions transmitted to her through her axe-bludgeon. Either way, Trapiche Emerald soon ended up ground to dust, but so did much of her ship’s navigational systems. It took all her knowledge and intuition just to keep the ship from going on a course straight into a nearby star, or into a death world. Instead, it landed on Europa, a moon of Jupiter in the Terran Solar System. The vast powers within Europa fueled Spinach Jade’s mental powers, but they also all but tore apart the ship in their wake. Using her weapon as a crude transmitter, she broadcasted for help from her Diamond, but to no avail; Blue Diamond V was history, as was the Lonsdaleite that blessed her, not to mention much of their empire; all that remained were her Jades and a few Demantoids. At least Kosmochlor and Mint Jadeite cared enough to pick up their fellow commander and repair her ship, but now this new solar system proved too interesting to leave alone, especially as they were late to the memo that the planets of this system were on quarantine. Abandoned from their greater mission, the three decided that it wouldn’t hurt to explore these banned worlds to see exactly why they were banned. After all, their instruments picked up nothing along the lines of corruptive energies or unreasonable temperatures, so what gives? It turns out that there are sapient lifeforms on the planet that give a great hoot about their resources, as well as some rebel gems that protect these lifeforms. The Jades recognized that the sheer psychic and memetic energies alone from these people and their allies would have been more than sufficient to designate this system under quarantine, and yet they did not relent. These enemies were only mortal after all, albeit fast breeders with long memories, so the sooner they could drive humanity and its products to extinction, the better it would be for the Greater Diamond Authority. At least that was the theory; in execution, the Jades were just three space nerds versus several billion humans and a large quotient of Gem rebels, including the most elite ex-court-members. Both Mint and Kosmo ended up bubbled for their troubles, though Spinach escaped an encroaching demise. From then on, Spinach Jade dedicated her life to ridding Earth of its weird life, primarily by introducing life from other worlds onto it. She grew fond of witnessing the cruelty of outer species to other outer species, and would instigate battles against the Earth, or at least bring a vicious monster from some world into a remote part of the planet and let it wreak havoc. Unfortunately for her efforts, very few modern-era Bios-Krystallos-aligned Gems support her means, let alone her nature as an eldritch BD5 Jade, so she’s in her war against Earth alone, or at least alone in the exact way she wants Earth for herself and her people’s purposes. Behind the scenes Spinach Jade is inspired by the Nephrites (Centipeetle's former species) of true Steven Universe canon. The author chose this specific type of jade to better reflect nephrite's true colors, though they are not usually layered lighter inside without acid treatment. Source SU Gem OC Reference - Spinach Jade on deviantART.